1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus, a method, and a computer readable medium thereof for transmitting data via a plurality of network interfaces; specifically, it relates to an apparatus, a method, and a computer readable medium thereof for transmitting data via a plurality of network interfaces by considering the transmission tunnel quality of the network interfaces.
2. Descriptions of the Related Art
In recent years, wire and wireless access and transmission techniques are developed quickly. Many areas provide different network access ways simultaneously so that users can go on to the Internet with their own kinds of network equipments. In order to cater to the trend, most of the computer devices in the current market are equipped with more than one network access interfaces. Therefore, users can select the most suitable network access interface to connect to the Internet.
FIG. 1 shows a wireless network system 1 of the prior art comprising a laptop 11, a WiMax base station 12, a WiFi base station 13, a 3G base station 14, an access network 15, a gateway 16, a content service network (CSN) 17 and a server 18. The laptop 11 comprises a WiMax interface (not shown), a WiFi interface (not shown) and a 3G interface (not shown). When a user wants to request data from the server 18 via the laptop 11, the WiMax interface, the WiFi interface or the 3G interface can be used to connect with the access network 15 via the corresponding base station first, and then to connect with the server 18 via the gateway 16 and the content service network 17. When transmitting the data the user requests, the server 18 can use the original path in a reverse direction.
Although most of the computer devices in the current market are mostly equipped with several network access interfaces, usually only one single interface of them is used during connection. Accordingly, the bandwidth of other network channels is unused, which causes waste.
In order to improve the utilization of the network channels, the network access interfaces in one computer device should be integrated to operate at the same time. The network interface techniques nowadays may be roughly classified into two types: the first type uses a multi-link point to point protocol (MLPPP), and the other type uses an approach to manage a consumed power of each network interface. Both types will be described in detail now.
The MLPPP technique can divide data to perform a multi-path transmission via a plurality of network interfaces. An aggregation server is used in a receiving end to reassemble the received packets, and then to transmit to a service layer for further processing. The MLPPP technique can achieve simultaneous transmission by using a plurality of different network interfaces to achieve an objective of enhancing a network throughput. However, this technique can only be applied to a PPP network and so far no documents mention about how to assign data packets to each network interface effectively.
The approach for managing the consumed power is to manage the consumed power of each network interface to precisely control a power supply. A specific way is to set a threshold value to determine the level of power consumption of each network interface. Once the consumed power exceeds the threshold value (for example, a transmission distance is far), the system will shut down the network interface and switch to another one instead until the power consumption is lower than the threshold value. However, this approach only adopts a Boolean operation for control, i.e., only on or off, without a more flexible management.
According to the aforementioned descriptions, although there are techniques to integrate different network interfaces nowadays, these techniques are either limited to certain networks or not able to integrate in a more flexible manner. Consequently, how to integrate different network interfaces in a more effective way is still a serious problem in the industry.